Building a career in banking: Bulge Bracket or Middle Market platforms?

I find the top comment pretty misguided and wrong. A few things:

• Top MM IB coverage groups are basically the same as an EB's coverage group and MD's often slide between the platforms. I would reframe your view as, "do I need balance sheet experience or not"
• I don't know if it's accurate to say "most MD's at MM iBanks came from BB's" There is some bias certainly because as a poster mentioned, the BB's have been around a long time and many of the MM banks are relatively newer. That said, enough time has gone on now that many are direct promotes/ lifers at this point at MM banks. Further, looking into the future, I doubt platforms like Holihan or Blair or Baird or Jeff are going to only hire or even prefer Goldman directors. They will hire internally. They already are frankly.

Now for OP's question on MM vs BB. I think this platform does a really bad job of explaining the role of a MM banker. The forum tends to minimize the role and industry as "vanilla sell sides" because it is very junior skewing and NYC/BB skewing and those individuals are very insecure and feel the need to separate their experience as better and more prestigious than banks that they view as beneath them. The reality is any transaction where hundreds of millions is getting passed is a massive project with a lot of intricacies. It's just so naïve to describe a transaction that large as simple. I think this perception comes from an obsession with modeling, which anyone senior will tell you is really not what sells companies. Narrative an story telling is what gets deals done, not a complicated exercise in false precision.

In truth, as mentioned, you are really comparing a place that offers debt service with a balance sheet and/or is known to IPO vs a place that doesn't. From my experience, it can be helpful gaining that experience to make you a more well rounded finance professional, but you could say the same thing for going into private equity for 2 years to make you a better banker. I might even argue PE experience would be better.

One of the best bankers I've worked with started at a MM, went into PE, did corp dev, then became a MM coverage MD. The guy was a beast. People hired him because he not only knew the coverage space better than almost everyone in the space, but he also could make compelling sales to anyone on the other side of the table because he had worked their job. He had credibility with buyers and sellers and that's why he won mandates--he's one of those rare MD's that can leave banks and bring all his old clients with him. He was unfireable. Guy was infamous for saying things that are HR nightmares and he could get away with it because he was that good.

This is a long way of saying, I think you are doing a disservice to yourself by saying mm IB isn't a sustainable long term career path. I think it more should be a question of whether you want a whale hunting model and want to be "big deal guy" or you simply love facilitating transactions. The best bankers I know are good bankers not because they "built relationships using debt service" but rather they are sector experts that have that knowledge because they love the niche they are in and have been doing transactions with companies in that niche for decades. They know buyers because they have worked with them before on transitions. 

I get the mentality of thinking you can use debt service to close a deal and sure brand matters, but many of the deals at the mm level are PE firms/ sophisticated buyers and sellers who aren’t just picking a bank because of the brand. It wouldn't surprise me if there are less PE firms in the ecosystem in the future, but there will always be firms that specialize in specific phases of growth and these firms will likely have many ex-bankers/ also be sophisticated buyers and sellers.

TL;DR BB experience could be great, but PE experience might be even better. Think should focus more on size of transactions you like facilitating.